All of which scares the bejesus out of me.
In case you didn't know it, I'm talking about our great and glorious leader, George W. Bush. The article is from today's Washington Post. According to the first paragraph, dubya's gotten all introspective:
At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.The piece lays out some of the oppressively bad news facing dubya:
The reality has been daunting by any account. No modern president has experienced such a sustained rejection by the American public. Bush's approval rating slipped below 50 percent in Washington Post-ABC News polls in January 2005 and has not topped that level in the 30 months since. The last president mired under 50 percent so long was Harry S. Truman. Even Richard M. Nixon did not fall below 50 percent until April 1973, 16 months before he resigned.Such pressure doesn't sit well with most presidents:
The polls reflect the events of Bush's second term, an unyielding sequence of bad news. Social Security. Hurricane Katrina. Harriet E. Miers. Dubai Ports World. Vice President Cheney's hunting accident. Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay and Mark Foley. The midterm elections. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Alberto R. Gonzales and Paul D. Wolfowitz. Immigration. And overshadowing it all, the Iraq war, now longer than the U.S. fight in World War II.
Other presidents have been crushed by the pressure. Lyndon B. Johnson was tormented by Vietnam War protesters outside his window shouting, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Nixon swam in self-pity during Watergate, talking to paintings and once asking Henry Kissinger to pray with him. Bill Clinton fumed against enemies and nursed deep grievances during his impeachment battle.But not our Georgie. The scary part for me is how in spite of all the crap he's dumped on the rest of the world, it obviously hasn't effected him that much. The reason?
Maybe Hitchens is right: Religion poisons everything.Much of the discussion focused on the nature of good and evil, a perennial theme for Bush, who casts the struggle against Islamic extremists in black-and-white terms. Michael Novak, a theologian who participated, said it was clear that Bush weathers his difficulties because he sees himself as doing the Lord's work.
"His faith is very strong," said Novak, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Faith is not enough by itself because there are a lot of people who have faith but weak hearts. But his faith is very strong. He seeks guidance, like every other president does, in prayer. And that means trying to be sure he's doing the right thing. And if you've got that set, all the criticism, it doesn't faze you very much. You're answering to God."
2 comments:
Could it possibly be that Mr. Bush is so insensible that he can't see that he is the very personification of the evils beleaguering America? Can a person's superstitious madness blind him to the extreme damage he has done?
Let's look at his record:
-- His negligence (at least) gave terrorists the opportunity to kill 3,000 Americans in the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps his advisors sensed that after 9/11 Mr. Bush would become the primary beneficiary of that attack, with approval ratings in the 90's.
-- His administration lied, and continues to lie, about the justification for a calamitous war.
-- In launching that war, he squandered world-wide good will toward the United States that he might have used to do much good.
-- His stubbornness in refusing to recognize the failure of one hairbrained strategy after another has -- so far -- caused the deaths of more that 3,500 American soldiers.
-- His Iraq "strategies" have weakened both our military and our economy, raising America's indebtedness to Communist China to truly alarming levels.
-- His domestic program has been, if possible, more disasterous than his foreign policy. He has created in his entire term the number of jobs that would have been created in a good year by his predecessor.
-- An inordinate number of the jobs created during his administration require the job holder to declare, "You want fries with that!"
-- He encouraged the trend that lowers the median income for the middle class while enriching his wealthy friends.
-- His domestic wire-tapping programs not only invade the privacy of millions of law-abiding Americans, they also break the law.
-- His administration has set a precident whereby innocent people can be pulled off the street, thrown into prison without access to attorney, and kept there indefinitely -- much like a medieval despot.
-- He has accomplished nothing to solve the problem of illegal immigration.
-- He has created a Supreme Court that has begun to dismantle the social reforms of the last 50 years; a court whose goal is to restore the good old days of the 1920's when women and minorities could be treated like property.
That a man could be responsible for this sort of dismantling of the "shining city on the hill" and still retain his sangfroid is beyond understanding. It suggests a deep absence of a soul. In my experience, such a lack is fairly common among those who profess great faith. Also among dry drunks.
His "calm" comes from one place, and it ain't his supposed deeply held religious beliefs; it's from his profound stupidity and concomitant arrogance.
He is simply too dumb to release what a complete moron he is...
Pilt
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